Spatial and Social Boundaries and the Paradox of Pastoral Land Tenure: A Case Study From Postsocialist Mongolia

CLAIM CONNECTIONS / 19

Where this source is used

• Fernández-Giménez proposes testing participatory coordination of seasonal movement as an alternative to rigid pasture tenure.

  • supports · pp. 65–74

• In the 1995 survey, 17 percent of sampled Jinst households reported camping at a site belonging to another household, compared with 57 percent in Bayan-Ovoo.

  • supports · p. 58, Table I

• In the 1995 survey, 28 percent of sampled Jinst households reported that others had grazed their customary winter pasture without permission, compared with 73 percent in Bayan-Ovoo.

  • supports · p. 58, Table I

• In 1995 Jinst herders objected that an installed bag leader had not been chosen by popular vote and successfully called for an open election that selected a different leader.

  • supports · p. 68, note 7

• The Jinst-specific 1995 observations sit inside a two-community study of fluid camps, reciprocal access, unequal claims, state land ownership, and lost collective coordination; they do not define a universal Mongolian, pastoral, nomadic, customary, or stateless government.

  • context · pp. 53–74

• Fernández-Giménez lived with herding camps in Jinst and Bayan-Ovoo during ten months in 1994–1995, conducted interviews with herders and officials, and surveyed 102 households across both districts in 1995.

  • supports · pp. 53–55, ‘Case study sites and methods’

• The two-community evidence does not show an observed Jinst outcome from formal tenure, and it supports editorial caution that fixed claimant boundaries could restrict emergency access or consolidate unequal claims.

  • context · pp. 62 and 65–74

• Across the two study communities, pasture remained state-owned for common use by herders of a defined sum and bag, while actual resource claims and seasonal movement crossed or nested within those administrative units.

  • supports · pp. 56–57 and 63–65

• In the article’s national and two-community account, collectives were dismantled and livestock privatized in 1992, leaving households responsible for movement, labor, transport, veterinary inputs, marketing, and production risk while pasture remained state-owned.

  • supports · pp. 56–59

• Across the two study communities, herders described setting aside winter and spring pasture and discouraging out-of-season grazing, while allowing outsiders emergency access with an expectation of reciprocity.

  • supports · p. 56

• Ruwalla cross-border shaykhly representation during a post-imperial border settlement and Jinst household pasture coordination after collective dissolution involved different actors, scales, institutions, evidence traditions, and state relationships; shared mobility vocabulary does not make them instances of one evolutionary or political type.

  • context · pp. 53–74

• Fernández-Giménez reports that government-issued formal possession certificates for campsites began in 1998 in the study area and often named only the senior herder in a camp.

  • supports · p. 61

• Across Jinst and Bayan-Ovoo, campsite claims could rest on inheritance, customary use, collective-period use, current occupancy, and ownership of a shelter; the senior herder commonly held the camp’s recognized claim.

  • supports · pp. 60–62

• In the pooled two-community evidence, poorer and newer herders often obtained temporary pasture access through kin or acquaintances and labor exchange, while wealthier or established households asserted stronger inherited or birthright claims.

  • supports · pp. 58–59 and 62

• Across the two study communities, khot ail were small, seasonally changeable camps in which households, often but not always kin, pooled animals into species herds and shared work such as hay cutting and moves.

  • supports · pp. 61–62, including note 4

• Across the two study communities, material constraints and uncertainty about whether others would move contributed to reduced mobility, prolonged use near settlements, and out-of-season grazing after collective regulation and transport support ended.

  • supports · pp. 58–60

• Fernández-Giménez reports that some herders in the study areas identified as neg nutgiinkhan, people of one place, while noting that scholars disputed whether the grouping was a local institution or an analytical construction.

  • supports · p. 62, including note 5

• Across the study communities, winter and spring pasture use commonly attached to a khot ail or a loose neighborhood of camps, with influence strongest near a campsite, diminishing with distance, and overlapping neighboring use areas.

  • supports · pp. 62–64

• Across the two study communities, privately held shelters, inherited or occupied campsites, group-managed wells, leased pump wells, open summer pasture, and overlapping winter pasture did not form one uniform property regime.

  • supports · pp. 60–64